Spohr: Music For Violin And Harp, Vol. 2

Description

Louis Spohr (1784-1859)Music for Violin and Harp, Vol. 2 Louis Spohr won an enormous reputation during the nineteenth century as a composer, violin virtuoso, conductor and teacher. He was also known for his upright, noble character and as a man of convinced liberal and democratic beliefs who was not afraid of speaking out against the autocracy which abounded in the small German principalities of the time. His contemporaries, indeed, also saw this ‘upright character’ translated into physical terms, as Spohr was around six and a half feet tall. He was one of music’s great travellers, wrote an entertaining and informative autobiography, compiled an influential violin tutor, invented the violin chin-rest, was one of the pioneers of baton conducting and devised the method of putting letters in a score as an aid to rehearsals. Spohr was born in Brunswick in North Germany on 5th April, 1784, and as a boy showed talent for the violin. When he was fifteen he joined the ducal orchestra and by 1802 had reached a stage at which the Duke considered him ready to go on a year-long study tour with the virtuoso Franz Anton Eck (1774-1804), ending in the then Russian capital, St Petersburg. Spohr won overnight fame when a concert in Leipzig in December 1804 was ecstatically reviewed and this set him out on a successful career that took him to the position of music director to the court of Gotha (1805-12), orchestral leader at Vienna’s Theater an der Wien, where he became friendly with Beethoven (1813-15), opera director at Frankfurt (1817-19) and finally, Hofkapellmeister at Kassel (1822-57), where he died on 22nd October, 1859. He also found time for numerous concert tours, including Italy (1816-17), England (1820) and Paris (1821). In later years he reduced the number of his public appearances as a violinist but continued to conduct important music festivals. When Spohr was appointed music director in Gotha in August 1805 he had just turned 21 and was, as he said in his Autobiography, ‘from his earliest youth very susceptible to female beauty’. Here, he soon fell head over heels in love with the eighteen-year-old Dorette Scheidler, daughter of one of the court singers, Susanne Scheidler. Dorette was a brilliant harpist and an accomplished pianist, who also spoke French and Italian fluently. In pursuing his courtship, Spohr first composed a concert aria for the mother and then a sonata for violin and harp, thus ensuring that he was able to meet Dorette regularly at rehearsal. Eventually the sonata was ready for performance and, Spohr tells us, on the drive home after the concert ‘I at length found courage to say: "Shall we thus play together for life?" Bursting into tears, she sank into my arms; the compact for life was sealed!’ The wedding took place on 2nd February, 1806, and Spohr immediately began a detailed study of the harp. He wrote further works for it and, over the next few years, the Spohrs won an out